<p>I am reflecting on a parent seminar I attended recently at a local school with Ben Kaplan, the scholarship guru. He’s a dynamic speaker, and I agree with his basic premise that kids should apply for scholarships. But, isn’t it correct that a vast majority of scholarships are gained through schools? I feel like parents are mislead that their kid is going to leverage their way into their dream school “For almost free!” I recall a local girl who busted her buns to write dozens of scholarship applications and walked away with only a few thousand dollars. That is a pittance when compared to a 50k per year school.
It is so typical where my kids have been raised for parents and kids to push themselves very hard to gain entry to elite schools, only to find out there will be no financial aid waiting for them. This is an affluent area where most families are in the top 10% of wage earners in the nation.
I feel like seminars like this are preying on these false hopes. The other problem is he is selling his either $20 or $40 dollar dvd’s, while he is using a public facility to promote his for profit agenda. Is it just me? or do others of you share my feelings?</p>
<p>Hi Lucymom-</p>
<p>Suspect we are from the same neck of the woods–didn’t go last night for exactly the reasons you stated. I’ve already had my education from CC!!</p>
<p>add to the fact that any outside scholarship $$ is usually deducted from FA awards…</p>
<p>one needs to carefully evaluate what makes sense for their particular situation…</p>
<p>this sounds like a huge rip-off…</p>
<p>We were told by our GC not to waste any time on outside scholarships.</p>
<p>Here’s an outside scholarship source to check though - if you work for a medium to major sized company see if they have a scholarship program for the kids of the employees. This can be a great source and sometimes be quite significant in the amount of dollars.</p>
<p>My daughter is one of the lucky ones who did very well with outside scholarships. She applied for many different scholarships and to several foundations that administer 30-40 scholarships each. She was awarded several different scholarships, the largest two renewable for all four years. The key to her success was targeting the scholarships that she was well qualified for and were more narrow in focus. Two of the scholarships she won were for students of a certain ancestry, another one gave heavy weight to a service club she was heavily involved in and two more were related to her hobby. And the largest one came from a local foundation that only serves students in our county. It was a lot of work, she had to write different essays for every application, but it was so worth it in the end. Since the only financial aid she was receiving was merit based, the outside scholarships covered nearly all of our EFC.</p>